Hi, everyone. Welcome to the A6C Podcast. I'm Sonal, and I'm here today with two special guests, and we are going to be talking about technology and policy.

And joining us for that discussion are Julie Samuels, who is the executive director of Engine, a nonprofit advocacy and research that supports the work of startups.

And Mike Maznick, who is the founder and editor-in-chief

of really popular tech policy and beyond site tech dirt, as well as the president of the Copia

Institute, sort of a think tank focus on policy and technology. Welcome. Thanks for having us.

Yeah, thanks. So we thought we do just sort of a whirlwind tour through all kinds of tech and policy issues,

because we only have like a limited amount of time.

So let's just go through a bunch of them.

And the reason we'd like to do this is because, you know, I feel like we sometimes have

specific things dedicated to just one topic.

But we have here two people who have been immersed on these issues

across the board. And so I can't think of any two people I'm more interested in sharing this

podcast with to talk about all these topics. And I guess the first question, you know, just

kick things off because it's really a conversation between you guys is what's happening now?

Like, why now? Like, Mike, you've been at, you found a tech director 20 years ago.

And Julie, like, Engine, I know has been around, but you went there for a specific reason.

Like, what's happening to bring all this stuff on?

Like, is this new?

I don't think it's that it's new.

I think it's that a couple things.

Number one, tech companies are getting a lot bigger. So they're not flying under the radar of government anymore.

Oh, that's huge.

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